


Mind of Winter

by CoffeeAndTin



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Unbeta'd, Whump, Winter Whumperland 2017, and whump, aravenwhumper, brothers being brothers, concussion, loki!whump, magical hand waving for the sake of plot, probably inaccurate depictions of medical equipment available on board a space ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 01:23:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13136205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoffeeAndTin/pseuds/CoffeeAndTin
Summary: A search for a weapons cache leaves Loki chilled to the bone.





	Mind of Winter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aravenwhumper](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=aravenwhumper).



> Here is my contribution for the 2017 Winter Whumperland Exchange! It's written for aravenwhumper, whose prompt was "A and B are caught in a snowstorm." The title is from one of my favorite poems by Wallace Stevens called The Snow Man. Have an amazing Holiday Season! I hope you enjoy!

                Bruce sat in the quiet of the ship’s infirmary. There had been little call for its use since the Asgardians had settled into their new home, but he had taken up residence there after The Big Guy had relinquished his hold. It had only taken a week. Maybe two.

            _Just here, floating through space_ , he mused as he ran a hand through his hair. That thought still hadn’t ceased to send a small flutter of worry through him. He rested an elbow on his desk and his chin atop his palm. He thought that perhaps he might nod off like that, but when Thor and Heimdall dragged Loki, between them, into the infirmary, Bruce was disabused of the notion. Loki was slumped between the other two Asgardians. His hair was wet, and he trembled beneath the ancient cloak that was wrapped around his otherwise bare frame. The laceration on Loki’s forehead stood in stark contrast to the pall of his skin.

            “Banner,” Thor said.

            There was nothing of Thor’s jocund nature there. Banner recognized that the use of his name was a quiet request for help. Whatever misgivings he had about treating Loki, Bruce set them aside, and busied himself by gathering supplies.

            “What the hell happened?”  

 

* * *

 

_“Feeling sentimental, brother?”_

_Loki cast Thor a sidelong glance, but did not reply. The grin that lit on the trickster’s lips didn’t touch his eyes as he continued along at the God of Thunder’s right side. They traversed the remains of Jotunheim, his would-be inheritance._

Merely contemplative _, he thought as he quickened his pace. Thor insisted on matching him stride-for-stride, of course. The sense of fraternal competition was both vexing and…comfortable, Loki realized with no small amount of chagrin. A breeze kicked up and the snow that had, until that point, been peaceably drifting to the ground, became heavier._

_“Should be close,” Loki said, finding that the snowfall had begun to hamper visibility._

_Thor made a sound in the back of his throat to let Loki know that he concurred._

_“We should have a care,” Thor said. “Heimdall said that there is nothing here that was not intended as a weapon at one time.”_

_Loki laughed at this._

_“Something amuses you?”_

_Loki was glad to hear the tone of his brother’s voice rise with childish petulance that was born of familiarity. Thor turned so that he could see Loki._

_“You,” Loki said. “Advising caution. It_ _seems people can change.”_

_Thor might have taken the bait, but movement drew the brothers’ attention. Something approached through the snowfall. Something huge, and fast._

* * *

 

           

            “Bring him over here,” Bruce said as he gestured to the nearest bed. “Get someone to bring blankets. We’re going to need them.”

            Thor and Heimdall did as they were asked. Bruce noted that though the motion of Loki’s body could charitably be considered despondent, his eyes were wary, and unfocused. Bruce was uncertain if it was because of the injury on his head, or the effects of the cold. Likely, it was both.

            “I didn’t know frost giants could get cold,” Bruce said before he could stop himself.

Loki’s mouth fell open, as though he were going to say that he was very much aware of the irony, but no words came out. He looked from Heimdall to Thor, and though it appeared Loki would shake himself apart with his shivering, he began to resist the help he was receiving.

“Easy, brother,” Thor hushed, even as he and Heimdall both took firmer grips. “We only wish to help.”

Thor’s petition for calm seemed to go unheard by Loki, who continued his erratic movement. It took little time for Loki to sap himself of the scant energy he had left, though; and he slumped between Thor and the former Gatekeeper.

 “On the bed,” Bruce said as he approached his patient, feeling his usual inclination toward a positive bedside manner greatly diminish.

              

* * *

 

               _Loki distracted the cache’s guardian, and Thor attacked. Thor chuckled to himself as he landed on a ledge and prepared to level another barrage of violence at their opponent. He would not try to convince himself that affairs were as they had been in their youth, but he saw no harm in momentarily enjoying the nostalgia._

            _Below, Loki and his many facsimiles stepped onto a waterway as they bedeviled the giant._

_Even from atop the ledge, Thor could hear the way the ice groaned as the ponderous, ancient creature stepped onto it. Thor’s good humor disappeared in an instant._

What are you doing?! _He thought._ Have you lost your mind?!

_He could see the emptiness in the giant’s gaze. All the years of solitude. Thor heard a deep rumble. He wanted to believe it was thunder, but he knew better. It was laughter. The giant raised his club, and all three of them understood that it would be the giant’s final act._

_“LOKI!”_

 

            _Despite the wind, Thor’s voice reached Loki’s ears with painful clarity. And it was too late. The giant’s club arched downward and struck the ice with percussive force. The multiple images of Loki blinked away. His gray-green eyes went wide as he plummeted downward into the water. His head struck ice, and water forced its way into his nose, mouth and into his lungs. And then…and then there was cold like he’d never felt; cold that tickled his brain in so maddening a way that he wanted to scream_.  

            _He steeled himself against panic and began to swim upward before a huge hand fastened itself around his ankle._

No!

_As Loki was pulled down, his lungs burned, and the water threatened to snuff out his life in its frigid arms. While the animal part of his brain scrabbled for air, he was aware that he might very well be dead by the time he hit the bottom. If there was a bottom. Everything was black, but Loki didn’t need light to tell him that his consciousness was fading. While feeling the bite of Jotunheim was not the end he’d expected, Loki supposed that death had always awaited him in one sort of airless, crushing blackness or another._

_The further he sank the more insistent the voice in the back of his mind became that he should just let go. After all, he had little choice. The remnants of his consciousness registered that his ankle had been released, but there was no energy left in him. That new freedom, in and of itself was useless. As something began dredging him upward, Loki was wholly unaware that he had cause to hope._

_Thor pulled Loki’s body from the water and laid him down on his side, on the solid ice. Seeing how still Loki was, Thor knelt down beside him and shook his shoulder. No response. Thor rolled Loki onto his back, and tilted his head backward._

_Loki’s eyes shot open and he rolled back onto his side with sudden, wild motion. He sputtered and choked and gagged, and brought up water. Loki clutched his head as he did so. For all his might in battle, Thor found that, in this instance, he was uncertain how to help. He patted his brother’s back. Loki would typically have shunned the gesture, he knew; but in his state, Thor doubted Loki even noticed. Slowly, the coughing subsided and Loki lowered his arms and wrapped them around himself._

_Loki’s body took on an entirely different aspect, then. His form juttered and twitched, and his breath hitched while his eyes remained half-lidded. His black hair pooled on the frozen ground, and the persistent snow was beginning to accumulate on him._

_“I’ll admit the water was bracing…”_

_Thor trailed off as he realized just how hollow humor felt in that moment. It was not right that Loki was experiencing such bone-wracking shivers._

_“I’m c-c-cold,” Loki said._

_Though the cold caused Loki’s voice to stammer over those two syllables, Thor could still hear surprise and disbelief in his words._

_“Let’s get you warm,” Thor said as he helped Loki up, perhaps more gently than he ever had._

 

* * *

 

“Where’s Thor?” Loki asked.

Bruce’s brow bunched at this.

“He went to get you more water,” Bruce told him as he tried not to sound as concerned as he felt.

“Mmm,” Loki murmured. There was dull dismissal in the sound, as though Thor hadn’t left mere minutes ago, just after bidding his brother farewell.

“Follow my finger with your eyes,” Bruce instructed.

Loki did so with sluggish obeisance that Bruce found disconcerting. Bruce grimaced and brought up a penlight. He reached for Loki’s face, but the trickster flinched away from him.

“Sorry,” Bruce said.

And it was the truth. Loki watched him with sunken, tired eyes. While Loki’s usually hungry, vulpine features set Bruce on edge, the notion of sympathizing with Loki felt that much more foreign.

 _Doesn’t mean you should let your guard down_ , Banner, he told himself.

“I just need to check your pupils,” he explained. “You almost definitely have a concussion.”

“How?” Loki rasped.

His eyes moved from Bruce to Heimdall, searching for answers to his misery.

“A weapon, created by Laufey,” Heimdall offered. “Kept by that cache, under the ice these many years. As I recall, that water was used to diminish the strengths of those who drank it.”

            There was no doubt in Heimdall’s voice, or in his watchful, golden eyes. Bruce didn’t suppose there would have been.  

“Could explain why Thor wasn’t influenced, if he didn’t ingest any of it,” Bruce said as he narrowed his gaze at Loki, who stared back blankly before slowly dipping his chin downward in a nod.

Taking care to avoid the wound on Loki's forehead, Bruce shone the penlight in his eyes. His pupils appeared to be too dilated, but Bruce found himself wondering, for the umpteenth time what was, or was not, a typical physiological trait of an Asgardian, who was born of Jotunheim. He had to believe that the warmed saline he’d been administering intravenously had been helping. Loki’s long, pale fingers were shaking less. His body temperature was rising.

 _All good signs_ , Bruce conceded to himself. _I think_.

“Can I sleep yet?”

Loki’s voice was weary and resigned, as though he could guess Bruce’s answer.

“I wouldn’t advise it just yet.”

 

* * *

 

_Though Loki tried to move under his own power, his body was less than inclined to heed his commands. After a few steps, the world tilted, and Loki’s knees buckled. A brutal onslaught of pain wracked his skull as the contents of his stomach spilled onto the icy ground._

_He emitted a pained, frustrated groan. Not even humiliation was enough to bring warmth to his body. His limbs shook with cold and fatigue. Loki’s throat, eyes, and nose burned, however, and Thor’s boots swam into view. Loki had to quell the urge to swat at his brother. A puerile impulse, he knew; but it was there no less. He allowed Thor to lift him, and pull him close before they began to make their way toward cover._

_The driving snow would have made their ship impossible to locate. As it was, it made finding a cave merely difficult. They found the entrance behind an outcropping of rock. Neither of them cared to examine too closely whether it was their own divine province, or sheer dumb luck. The two moved along a narrow passageway until they reached a cavernous antechamber. The air was stale there, but at least they were out of the snow. Thor guided his brother to a wall where he unslung Loki’s arm from about his shoulders._

_“Stay here,” Thor said as he allowed Loki to find support on the wall._

Like I have a choice _, Loki thought. The most he managed was a small sound in the back of his throat that sounded more like assent than petulance. Loki cast as baleful a glare as he could at his brother while he set about gathering torches that had been left behind and using them to stoke a flame. He prattled about the highlights of their most recent battle, all the while._

_“I’ll be back,” Thor said as he disappeared to search for other supplies. Loki hadn’t the strength to do anything but hold up the wall. Perhaps not even that, he realized as his quavering knees folded. Loki slid to the floor and curled his long arms around his middle. There was no warmth to be found in the leathers that encased him. The cold clung to him with insistence, and no matter how hard he shivered, or how loudly his teeth chattered, Loki seemed unable to shake its grasp._

_He decided that it was a unique hell, the way his body quaked and exacerbated the ache in his muscles; the way his flesh was numb and somehow, ablaze at the same time. His head ached, and it dipped downward, toward his knees._

_It was blasphemy that he should be so cold._

_“Hey,” Thor’s voice echoed._

_Loki’s head jolted upward, and he instantly regretted the motion. He cursed under his breath and looked at Thor, though his expression softened when he realized he had no recollection of closing his eyes._

_“Stay awake. You’ve hurt your head.”_

_“I…ice,” Loki offered as an explanation. The tremor in his jaw made the utterance of that small word challenging._

_Thor hefted the supplies off of his shoulder, and onto the cave floor._

_“Found the cache,” Thor mentioned._

_On his return, Thor set about building a more sustainable fire, intermittently reminding Loki to remain conscious. Once Thor stoked a flame, and assured himself it would remain alight for the foreseeable future, he turned his attention to his brother, who sat, quaking, on the ground. The Asgardian king made no effort to keep the concern from his face._

_“We should remove your leathers,” Thor said. “They’re doing you no good, and I found blankets.”_

_“I c-can m-manage.”_

_Both of them knew it was a lie, but Thor allowed Loki the dignity of at least trying to undress himself. Thor watched as his brother fumbled with the wet garb, and his heart went out to Loki when his face fell, defeated by so fundamental a task._

_“Come, brother,” Thor said quietly as he approached. “Let me help you.”_

_Thor tried to catch Loki’s gaze as he helped him up. He couldn’t be certain, but Loki’s eyes looked as though they went unfocused when he reached his feet. Thor allowed him to readjust, and wondered if his Loki was trying to prevent his gorge from rising again. Loki nodded, and kept his eyes downward as Thor removed the water-logged clothing._

_A short time later, Loki sat near the fire, swaddled in musty robes and blankets as they waited for the storm to pass. It was difficult to track the many directions Thor’s one-way conversation seemed to take, but he listened in case it held some clue as to how to feel warmth again._

 

* * *

 

             In the dim light of the infirmary, Thor watched as Loki slept. 


End file.
